The national media recently turned its attention to Flint, Michigan, which declared a state of emergency in December 2015 after many months of elevated lead levels in the city’s water. President Obama directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide relief to Flint residents in January. This crisis should do more than arouse sympathy for the families who have been harmed. It should raise awareness of the environmental factors affecting educational equity nationwide, including here in Pennsylvania.
According to the World Health Organization, increased lead levels in the blood of preschool children can lead to a spectrum of neurological harms including lower IQ and shortened attention span. High blood-lead levels in school age children are linked with lower math and reading scores. As a result, children in communities with high lead exposure tend to have poorer academic performance and greater need for special education services. They are also less likely to develop into productive citizens and leaders when they reach adulthood. In Flint, the number of children with high blood-lead levels doubled after the water became contaminated. Policymakers at the state and federal level have been asked to increase funding for educational services in Flint to offset the cognitive harms of lead contamination. Furthermore, environmental justice organizations in Michigan, such as the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, Michigan, a part of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, are working to educate the community and the state to prevent this type of environmental and government disaster from happening again.
Civil rights advocates use the term “environmental racism” to describe policy which increases the likelihood that pollution will harm poor communities and communities of color, rather than predominantly White communities. Because the decision to switch the source of Flint’s water supply to a polluted local river was made by a governor-appointed “emergency manager” as a cost-saving measure, many commentators have characterized the decision as showing gross disregard for the health of Flint’s predominately Black population, and an instance of environmental racism.
Philadelphia-based Solomon Jones points out that the Flint crisis is not the first instance of environmental racism in the U.S.. In fact, a 2000 study of Chester, Pennsylvania, by the Environmental Protection Agency found that Chester had a minority population of 70%, and the highest concentration of industrial facilities in the state, including a variety of waste processing facilities. It also found that 60% of Chester children had unacceptably high blood-lead levels.
As Sarah Frostensen explains at Vox, the implications of Flint’s water crisis reach far beyond Michigan because lead exposure along racial lines occurs throughout the country. A national study by the Center for Disease Control (“CDC”) found that Black children are twice as likely to have high blood-lead levels as White children. A team of Penn State researchers has theorized that this overexposure contributes to the increased likelihood that Black students will be placed in special education. Blood-lead levels also vary by location. A separate CDC study found that, in Pennsylvania, 1.28% of children tested have high blood-lead levels. That rate is the third highest in the CDC data set, more than double the national rate (0.53%), and almost triple the Michigan rate (0.46%).
Jeremy Orr, the Environmental Justice Coordinator for the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic passionately signals to the tragedy of environmental racism on children of color, specifically as it pertains to the Flint crisis. He argues, “The narrative that is dominating is a narrative of government failure. Right… It had to be the government this time, other times its private sector. So what is being overshadowed is the impact, and its children that should be the main focus. Environmental justice inherently deals with the impact of environmental hazards and decision-making on poor communities and communities of color. Now you’re talking about a poor community of color, where the most at risk people, are children of color. . . . So you are talking about developmental impact that will be there for life. Right, for life, for children who haven’t even started head start, pre-school yet. Its unfortunate, and you got to ask yourself if this could have happened to any other type of community, probably not.”
The disproportionate impact of environmental harms on communities of color parallels the longstanding achievement gap between students of color and White students. Policymakers in Pennsylvania should treat the Flint crisis as a reminder to craft equitable policy, which accounts for the effect of environmental harms on educational success.
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